Nina Pancheva

Nina Pacheva-Kirkova is a United Kingdom-based visual artist. Her M A of Fine Art she received at University of Southampton in 2011. In 2015 she completed her PHD at the same university. Her practice-based research investigated at painting in post-communist Bulgaria and its relationship to Socialist Realism.

“My works are not an attempt at self-expression. Also, they are not an attempt to escape reality. My artistic approach is the result of the idea that fine art is a unique method for exploring and 'seeing' the world. Working on my paintings and installations has enabled me to seek answers to questions that I find fundamental. In this sense, I could describe my works as concept-based, as looking for the appropriate means of expressions correlated to questions of interest.” In my art practice I often work on questions concerning political and ecological problems, because I am convinced that visual art could exceed its formal endeavors and could provide new and different insights than a purely scientific approach. Suggesting art practice employing fine art as a way of maintaining critical debate about political, ecological, or maybe universal questions would assume that the latter possesses a cognitive function that allows it to offer new knowledge on the subject matter. This assumption is supported by the concept of art developed by Tzvetan Todorov in his book “The Limits of Art”.